Pens were popular gifts once. Any type of pens. In fact a Christmas without a pen was like cranberry without a sauce, a pig without a blanket, a ... You get the idea!
When I was a kid in the sixties I got pens in every shape, size and type.
The larger pen gifts were the best like those huge tin trays of felt pens that contained at least ten kinds of red all with fabulous names like crimson and scarlet. Michaelangelo would have died for a tin of pens like that!
But my favourites were the toys with pens cleverly disguised. Spirograph was a staple, with all its little pins and plastic cogs. It was hypnotic.
And what about the wonderful Paint Wheels, a boxed set of plastic roller pens that printed as they rolled out different shapes onto paper, which probably came inside the set under the plastic tray. Free paper!
Best of all was a type of thick pen shaped like a witch, with a pointy hat, but I forget the name. They may have even been paint- based rather than a pen. Anyone remember witch pens?
My least favourite pen gifts were those intended to make me work harder at school. They had no place under the tree. Trojan horses masquerading as fun sent by Krampus.
The Oxford geometry set, in its cute workhouse tin, springs to mind, replete with pencil, biro, compass, protractor and other forms of torture.
Never far away from it was a boxed Parker pen, sporting the brand's familiar metal arrow clasp. No doubt a symbol of even greater ambitions, to me it pointed down and said "you're Homework's late!"
One pen which successfully spanned both fun and school was the multiple colour ballpoint. It was a thick silver thing containing about eight different coloured pens, each one able to be dispensed by sliding down its coloured button. They probably had a name but I did love those things and filled exercise book after exercise book with rainbow doodles and swirls!
What Christmas pen memories do you have?
I got the Parker pen set as a present. When I was at primary school you only progressed from pencil to ink pen when your handwriting was deemed good enough. I was the last in my year to be awarded a pen and that was only because they hoped it would improve my writing. It never did, it's still terrible. It gave the kids I taught a sense of achievement when they could read my comments on their work without help!
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ReplyDeleteSpotted it and de spammed it kev. No idea why it does it. Sorry. Love your story. Did you develop a special fast style for writing school reports?
DeleteThanks. I always write fast which made my reports illegible until computers came along. I used to print when I wrote on the board.
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ReplyDeleteBeen out all day Kev. I'll unspam it.
DeleteI got a Spirograph set for Christmas one year, which included a number of different coloured pens. I don't remember where I got it from, but I had a fountain pen as a kid, and I was fascinated by that little strip of metal on the barrel that one pulled to fill the pen with ink. Seems it occupied me for hours.
ReplyDeleteYou will doubtless like this Christmas memory. In the 70's, my brother and I got a toy called "Mr Rembrandt" by Ideal.It was a robot that you inserted several colored pens into. Then you inserted a "program disc" that told the robot which way to go.Finally, you put him on a piece of paper and he would " draw" as he rolled along.Kind of the best of both worlds,pen and a Zeroid- like robot wouldn't you say? Speaking of Rembrandt, one Christmas I got a set of" Rembrandt" Pastel colored chalks.I still have and use them 40 + years later.
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